Colombia. Fortinet announced that it will hold the XTreme Team Latin America (XTreme) until October 14 at the Hard Rock Hotel, Riviera Maya in Cancun, Mexico. This annual event will bring together more than 300 cybersecurity professionals from more than 20 countries in the LATAM and Caribbean region, including partners, executives, CIOs and security experts, who will meet to discuss threat trends and concerns about the future of digital security, addressing topics such as the implications of digital transformation and the importance of advanced cybersecurity education.
The XTreme event offers exclusive training and content, as well as prizes so that participants can put their skills into practice and deepen their technological and business knowledge when solving real-world problems and, at the same time, participants will be able to obtain recognition for their performance with Fortinet solutions.
"Fortinet is committed to investing in partner and customer education, primarily now with the growth of virtualization and mobile technologies. This event is a platform that is used to instruct key executives, so that in turn, they are able to share their knowledge with their industry colleagues, increasing performance expectations and technical excellence," said Pedro Paixao, General Manager and Vice President of International Sales at Fortinet. "Some employees display unsafe online behavior such as opening spam emails, which can compromise the entire company. Fortinet's experts believe that identifying threats is just as important as dealing with them, so we challenge our partners to embrace change, quickly, to combat threats head-on."
As an example of how real the impact of such threats is, Fortinet's 2016 global survey showed that since August of this year, 52% of CIOs in Latin America, specifically in Mexico and Brazil, have experienced intrusions to their security. The XTreme event is where professionals from different countries come together to share similar experiences and brainstorm about the future of digital transformation.
Paixao added: "A cybersecurity problem in Peru may be as common as in Brazil despite economic and language differences. Our region is not separated by virtual barriers. From May to June, malicious URLs increased in Brazil by almost 83% compared to 16% globally. The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro caused this increase and many of the tourists, originally from other countries, were affected. The only way to successfully stop cyberattacks is to unify and share our experience. Knowledge is the most powerful firewall."
Digital transformation also represents a major challenge for CIOs. Staying competitive online has become a vital part of business, both for mobility and consumption. Therefore, Fortinet's 20 Highest Level Partners will participate in the CIO Summit, which will take place, simultaneously with the XTreme, during the first two days of the event. These orientation sessions will include executive networking dynamics, professional development within a unique business environment, and a large number of business-related topics.
"The Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data Analytics, Cloud Services, and Social Technology are just some of the common concepts that must be addressed now, if we are to continue to be innovative and prosperous in a world where a growing digital population has an evolutionary perception of the value of the products and services they acquire," said Martin Hoz, Vice President of Technical Support and Sales Engineering at Fortinet. "We show executives how digital transformation can prepare their company for the new digital reality and, at the same time, explain how cybersecurity can protect their business, reduce the company's marketing processes and risks, as well as increase the ability to enter new markets, in order to increase margins."
Fortinet launched the XTreme event in Latin America in 2006 and since then, it has quickly adapted to other regions of the world. For the second consecutive year, XTreme will offer simultaneous English translation for its LATAM partners who require it Fortinet is committed to improving the experience of its customers every year by adapting to their needs and informing them at all times about the progressive threat landscape.
